Q: Describe your vision of sustainable furniture design.
A: We design our furniture to last as long as, if not longer than, it took the tree that made it to grow, and to be passed down through a family. I don’t design for fashion or timeliness, which ebbs and flows, but for timelessness—to create something that will survive my life and be just as current then as now. This seems to me the most basic form of sustainability. Products today often exhibit design obsolescence—they are made to break down within five years. Then you must buy another and another so in the end you consume and pay more than if you bought one table designed to last a lifetime.

Q: Is furniture art?
A: I don’t know that furniture ever really becomes art, but the process is artful. Art, for me, has no masters—it doesn’t owe anything to anybody. Design has a lot of different masters: economy, craft, utility. Still, looking at good design is like hearing music that satisfies the soul; you come into its harmony and are free for a moment.

Ellipse Dining Chairs in walnut, photo courtesy Thos. Moser

Q: What’s next?
A: The long-term plan is to build a showroom on the plot of land in downtown Freeport [currently featuring a Moser chair in a glass case]. I like to dream about what I would create for that space if I were an architect—glass and stone, natural materials, gardens, art. A place you go not only for the furniture, but just to visit. A reason to pull off the highway.

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About Bright-Minded Home

This blog, and its companion column in Maine Home + Design magazine, offers an investigation into the art of creating healthy, beautiful, and energy efficient homes. We talk to people who share their secrets with us. We look at homes that are providing examples. We learn tricks of the trade. This is also a blog about what home means to me. I share my experiences in a Platinum LEED house in Maine and muse about why the search to find home is so important for us all.